The ‘Barbie’ Freak-Out, Oscar Nominations Mailbag, and ‘The Zone of Interest’

Did Don Draper really buy the world of Coke? Did Tony Soprano really die or just order more onion rings? The finales of our favorite shows can make us argue, make us cry, and make us crazy. From Spotify and the Ringer, I'm Andy Greenwald, and this is Stick the Landing, a new podcast where we'll be telling the story of modern TV backwards, one fade out at a time.

Find Stick the Landing on Wednesdays on the Prestige TV feed on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Sean Fennasy. I'm Amanda Daven. And this is the Big Picture A Conversation show about Oscar nominations, the Zone of Interest, Sundance, and Hillary Clinton, of course.

I asked you guys to stay off live. You know, I asked you. I told you not to post. And look, here we are.

Once again, somehow roped into the same ish box as Hillary Clinton. That's what I'm angry about. As I said, I was not angry about the nominations. I understood I didn't agree with all of it, but I'm fucking angry that somehow I had to deal with Hillary Clinton again.

Hillary Clinton, go do something. Like, honestly, we have problems. I'm serious, like, multiple horrific conflicts in the world, climate change. Like, if it needs to be a girl boss thing, then, like, pay equity, maternal health.

The fact that it takes six months to get a college disappointment. I'm still paying taxes until I'm like, there are a lot of issues. But not this. Get away.

Go do something. You were so calm before we started recording. That's so funny. And as soon as I said, one human's name, this all came furling out.

Incredible rant for you. I'm not going to say it. I think that was the greatest moment in the history of the picture. I'm just going to put it right down.

That has the belt. I have a strong suspicion that if I opened it this way, I might have listed what a lot of people wanted from you, from the conversation about the Oscar nominations. They wanted Fire, Brimstone, Rage. How dare they not recognize Greta Garwick and Margot Robbie?

You, seasoned and thoughtful, Oscar pundit, you understood. And for zig, like, in the world. Guys, and this is going to be the awards show. It got eight nominations.

I said Tuesday morning, and I'll say again, I'm the best director slot. I don't know who I would take it away from to get to Greta. We got some questions about the acting categories and I know exactly who I would take it away from to give it to Margot. But like, it's, it's, I was disappointed.

I said so, but also I understood how it happened. And also I found the discourse afterwards to just be absolutely horrifying. It was just very stupid. Well, stupid and annoying.

And I was like, oh, this is why I don't like things or like try to join in things that other people like. This is why like I don't. Well, you put your finger on something there. Exactly.

Because like, this is just, I do, I need to be affiliated with all this, including Hillary Clinton. Yeah, you've always been a non-jointer as long as I've known you. Yeah. And you tried, I thought in a very spirited and careful way to celebrate Barbie and what Barbie accomplishes.

But when things like this get big, this is what happens. I really liked Barbie. And I also think that a tremendous amount of skill and intelligence and craft went into making Barbie. I really do.

And I understand that other people don't end. It might be a type of writing humor. It might be perspective, I mean, it's certainly perspective and life experience, but also just, it might be that I respond to that type of production design in a way that other people do not. I, the obvious comp here is like, this is a, this is a mini dark night storm, you know, just in terms of like a group of people feeling that they were not, they were interested in movies and what they were interested in movies was like not recognized at the academy, which is, you know, just poetic given that this is the year that Christopher Nolan is finally getting his makeup for dark night.

But anyway, I have been thinking. And frankly, 10 years from now, Greta Gerwig will make interesting viral pick of Susan B. Anthony and it'll be audacious and interesting and then she will be recognized. So, so I think, I think sociologically pop culture wise, that's what's happening.

But for me, I was thinking about how Barbie was my number two movie of the year and Spider-Verse was yours. And Spider-Verse is also like an extraordinarily achievement of filmmaking and really beautiful. And like, I don't respond to that type of filmmaking in the same way. So there is something, and I'm not equating them or saying that one's better than the other, but it's just kind of like, there's correlation.

I see the achievement in Barbie and other people don't like that. That's fine. Yeah, I think, let's set a discourse aside for a second, because I frankly don't want to spend very much time on that. It's as bad faith as all of those conversations are.

What's relevant, I think, is the fact that there was this kind of outcry even within the community, Ryan Gosling releasing a statement in the aftermath of a nomination. I mean, that's just an awkward position to be put in where you as Ken get nominated and the other two don't. If you don't acknowledge it, like, you're also in trouble? It would have been weird.

Yeah. It definitely would have been a little weird. But, you know, there's, it's sort of a big conversation. And I think you're 100 percent right.

You nailed it. It feels very similar to the conversation when the dark night was nominated for Best Picture, which then led to significant academy changes. They have reshaped how they nominate movies and actors and filmmakers. Now, I completely agree with you about the director's slate.

It's one of the best director's slates in recent times. It's very exciting. I was joking about the European Nature of the Academy Awards lately, because other European nations do have their own film awards. And as the Academy considers itself like the world body, even though it's 100-year history, does not reflect that.

It's amusing to me now that films that are made in the German language or the French language are now just as capable, if not more capable of competing in Best Picture. But, Justin Trevina nominated is a historic moment in many ways. So did it come with the expense of credit, or I guess, in so far as only five people, I mean, nominated, but... But also the expense of Alexander Payne.

I mean, there are never many people in the next. And another thing where people have been like, we need to do the replace just to interk a slough for credit. I mean, that sucks for all of us. That's what I do with the best.

And I think obviously the American for a nomination also triggered for me personally, just genuinely... Does it make sense, right? Like, logically, in terms of how we're checking boxes. I just don't mathematically.

Even though I really liked her. I think I even, I was thinking about this last night as I fell asleep, which just gives you another insight into my mind. You've been Sean Pildt. No, no, I was not quite.

I was thinking about how I do think I put that on my very early Wild Swing predictions. Oh, did you? Yeah. So I know, so that worked out for me.

Yeah, that's one. We haven't returned to those. We'll wait to return to our big Oscar bet after the award. I don't think we did very well.

Nevertheless, speaking of Spider-Bress, my best picture slate there. Listen, it's a dream. It didn't work out. It didn't work out.

And it's good to love what you love. And then to not talk to other people about it. It's been fun and exciting though, that so many people care about these awards. And I think it's unfortunate that some of the so-called snubs drove some of the conversation, but I care about the Academy Awards this day.

And this is one of the best slates of Academy Award nominations in its history. It was a very exciting year for film. I pretty much liked every single movie that is nominated for Best Picture, if not loved. Many of the films that are in my top 20 are in that list.

I had to think through it, but yeah, I did too. And I think we're now at a place where movies like MyStro, which we really admire, but have complicated feelings about, we're now sort of like dinging maybe harder than we would have. Right. Bradley Cooper and GD flew to London yesterday together.

So they're just thriving people. I read the internet. I read the internet. OK.

I read everybody's bad takes. And I got very angry. And then I went and I looked at the tabloids, which is another form of self-hate and also collective disintegration. But that's OK.

I still read them. I saw that Bradley Cooper and GD were headed off together with her bodyguard. And Bradley was hugging her bodyguard. I see.

I'm happy for both of them. Me too. I'm happy for the listeners of the show. They had so many questions.

We opened the mailbag. Look at you. They had a lot to say. Bobby Wagner is here to help us answer some of those questions.

Can I say something? I noticed that people were like, what was Amanda on on Tuesday morning? What were you on? I thought I was like pretty normal.

And you don't think I was normal? I thought you were great. I thought I was like, we're straight. I was there like something unusual to my performance?

I think you're on something today. Pretty clearly. I'm like really hot now because I'm so upset. You really just turned it on.

I just. It was like Daniel Day Lewis waiting in the wings before a big speech. And there will be like, it's like I knew it was coming. And I had really not.

You texted it to us and Bobby and I just. I was like our episode is made. As soon as that happened, I was like, yes. They've done it again.

Big Hillary has delivered it hashtag. Was it hashtag Hillary Barbie or Barbie Hillary? Hillary. What was the intention there?

Was that they are going to run on the ticket together? You know what another thing that just made me so angry about it was like it was a full. It took them 24 hours for whatever team of people she's assembled to not solve any of the world's problems and instead sit together and we're talking about what she's supposed to do. Literally anything.

Oh my God. It matters. And I feel this way a little bit about Obama too as the years go on. You're digging into.

Listen, I'm not a serious person. I can't do this. You know, Obama was also snobbed with American Symphony. I'll have you know, no nominations for higher than I should have won.

There was one song. But I'm just like I. So does that mean? Obama and Hillary are competing in best song?

I guess so. I don't know if Barbie the film has accepted Hillary Barbie the hashtag. I think Obama and Obama can't run again. We should change the rules and we should have them both enter the race this fall as well.

Honestly, that would be better than this. I do this because I trust you won't be better than this. You're right. Well, but it's like, can you make that situation worse?

I guess so. I think we could. Probably. Probably.

We could. This is going to be a chaotic episode. We have this mailbag. I've been watching Sundance movies.

I'll share some Sundance thoughts. And then we're going to talk about the zone of interest because even though it is still not widely seen, it is widely nominated and one of the best movies of the year. So we're going to talk through it for those in the world who have seen it. And if you haven't, you can return to this episode and listen to it'll come at the end.

So it's going to be a pleasure that you nominated Film Maker fact that he had like seen some of the clips before was very helpful in kind of him latching on and then trying to figure out what was going on around him. He was mostly like really excited when you know make him laugh would come on or anything with an umbrella because an umbrella is one of his favorite things in the world right now in any form. Just like the actual umbrella, the song umbrella by Jay-Z and Rihanna but he does the uh-huh ad lib when he wants to listen to it. It's like a really rich cultural time at Naxasauce.

Anyway so somehow he thinks that like when he says movie he just means singing in the rain now. That's like the only movie that he knows so he's like movie and then I put on singing in the rain and I don't know whether I want to show him another movie because I think there's- Well we'll not get him out to a screening of it. I think there's- I- well I know. You should just cut- now it's time to cut straight to Babylon.

He's like he's the same thing in the rain. It's fucking Babylon. Speaking of Margarabi snubs. Yeah.

Uh okay well I don't think there were any questions for Nax here unfortunately. Okay I just you know Wonka maybe will be his second movie. That's actually despicable. It is.

It is. It's not a sequel. But I thought about Mary Poppins. He also loves Mary Poppins.

Mary Poppins is great. That's a good one. That's like a slow start. Okay.

It's like a good 25 minutes if I have problems at the bank before Mary Poppins shows up. You know. I see. I haven't seen Mary Poppins.

You could just skip that. He is like three. You know. What do we do now?

But you know I'm trying to encourage like he sits on the couch with us. We sit down. It's movie. You know.

You should do some Bulgarian slow cinema. Okay. You know. We should do or maybe some Carl theater dryer.

This is the Sixers game that's going to my house every fucking night. John would be at the free throw line. What's the difference? All right Bob what give us some questions.

How'd you choose these? As I do every time I scroll through every single reply to the tweet because I am an honest proprietor of questions for the big picture mailbag. And I pick the ones that I think are going to elicit the best responses from you guys. That's my characteristics.

So if you're submitting a question, don't submit a question for yourself. Submit a question that will make a man to have a meltdown somewhere to the Hillary Clinton moment. First question comes from Susan. After this year and last year are the Oscars just going to be this predictable for the foreseeable future.

And do you think the Academy cares enough to make a change? I mean they're predictable until they're not. You know. It's like 2019 was extremely predictable until Bongoon Ho won best director and we like turned to each other and we were like oh my god this is happening in the parasite one best picture.

And there are instances of that. Moonlight on the land La La Land was like the behemoth and that was a surprise in a very memorable way. So I think the other thing is that you know if you're listening to this podcast and submitting a question then you're also really locked in. So it's on you.

Not on you. It's on us. We're all paying attention and we've gotten pretty good at this. Yes.

Despite the demeanor of the show I think we actually take it quite seriously. And so we read a lot and we are closely following it. So it feels more predictable. And I think also the movie going public has become more aware of the concept of precurs and social media has allowed people access to things like the Gotham Awards like no one knew about 10 years ago.

They didn't really follow these kinds of things as closely as we do now. So it feels more predictable. And frankly the producers guild is something that if you know about that it charts the path for the most part to almost always at least eight of the nominees. And so the best picture race in particular felt very predictable once that came through this year.

The show itself would benefit I think from a couple of surprise wins but there's no way to manifest that. There's not a person that isn't organizing the way that the voting is played out and the campaigning is so complicated that it's easy to see what the direction things are heading in. I think I made this point in a meeting I was in the other day where someone was asking me about the nominations. And I was like I think I got like 21 of 23 guesses right last year but the awards.

There's just like the betting markets are clear the precursors are clear there's just a lot of stuff out there. What can the academy do to change this? Push the show up. Push the show up to January.

That's the only way to fix this is to have the voting entirely done in December and make sure that the movies are in the hands of the people that are voting and do away with all these precursors. It's fun for us to make fun of the Golden Globes and to chart sag nominations. But like who gives a shit about that stuff? This show and that the industry ultimately cares about Oscars.

So moving up. There's a counter example from this year which is that the Emmys were 10 days after the Golden Globes. Maybe two weeks but very close afterwards. And they were even the Emmys this year were honoring like a half a different season.

They delayed four months. I mean number one the Emmys got to fix their eligibility window number two they should actually be in January. But it was confusing but it was almost exactly a repeat in the TV category. Now there are some reasons for that.

There's just so much TV that people just watch three shows and vote for them. It's very similar to the Oscars this year where it's like it's been Oppenheimer all the way down. The same way it was going to be succession all the way down. And some of that is honestly I think on both sides the Golden Globes just fighting for any legitimacy and revenue in the future.

And so they played it really really safe this year and sort of copycatted what they thought the Oscars would be. But that's a Golden Globes problem of which there's always one not an Academy problem. So moving it up would just be better for us and probably better for movies. Well there's an interesting thing has kind of calcified around Hollywood where the release latest so bad this month even by the standards of Dumpuary there's nothing.

There was nothing last Friday. There's nothing this Friday. What the fuck man? And why are there some weeks where there are five wide release films and there are multiple weeks this year where there are no wide release films or if there is one it's from like Lionsgate.

That's weird. It's because I understand my life. I understand my life. A January Lionsgate releases very different from you know an October Warner Brothers release.

So I say that because everybody has accepted that most of the tools that go into marketing promotion, you know publicity are going towards things like Sundance and things like the awards at this time of year. And it's just become the schedule. It's just the schedule of the world. The same way that the NBA has a schedule of the season and free agency and the draft.

And then there's like six weeks where nothing happens. Movies have a very similar kind of schedule. These are real people working in real jobs and there's only so many people that do the work. So if you allocate January to March, it means the show's like ours only talk about the same movies over and over again because no new movies come out and we're talking about the awards race.

And frankly we get sick of it and other people get sick of it and we start like warping our opinions of the movies because we've been talking about them so much. And it's also not good to the talent because the talent fucking hate this. The people that are nominated are hate having to go to 100 events in 39 days. That's not fun.

It's fucking annoying. So I think it's a mistake. I think they should I've been saying for years they should move it up. But if it starts to feel like a fate completely with the show, that's not good for the show either.

So I think it's a good question in so far as a change I personally think should be made. I agree with you. The only thing is it's an amazing advertisement campaign for the movies that you make it to like awards season and to the nominations. And you know we see how people see movies now.

So January and February are kind of reserved for being like, oh well I guess I should go see four things or how can I go find. There's fewer of those though. You were the first person who said to me like December doesn't work anymore and for the most part it doesn't. I mean that's true but right now like for example I went to see Zona Ventress again yesterday in order to prepare for this podcast and it was like a very noticeably fuller screening.

You know I live in Los Angeles. People are paying attention to awards and that sort of thing but it was still a weekday in the middle of the day. And almost every other movie at the theater besides Mean Girls was an Oscar nominated movie or an awards season movie. And it is clear that there is theater business on a smaller scale but I don't know what other scale these movies are going to have a chance to be seen in theaters.

It's just contextually it used to be a lot different. Everything used to be different. But like the Oscar nominated movies usually do better business for a variety of reasons. This year in particular is unusual because the two biggest box office drivers that are nominated came out July.

So there's not that like carry over where you're going to see movies for the next couple of months that came out nine months ago. That doesn't exist anymore. Part of it though is that it's like they've made room for the awards films to play in theaters right now but most people have already seen those awards films so they're not really seeing any new movies which I don't think is a good strategy for movies or movie theaters. Just saying it.

Okay what's the next question? Blake wants to know. The Oscars almost always have one big surprise when we're just talking about how predictable it is and how sometimes there is a surprise that sneaks in there. What will be this year's surprise when?

You got a guess? I don't see one. I think best actress. There are two ways that it could go and I don't it could go to Amazon or it could go to the Gladstone and you and you and I have kind of seesaw it back and forth on where we think it's it's going to be so that could be a surprise one way or the other just in that we're not 100% sure.

I know that you feel pretty sure at this point that it's going to be Amazon. I I do think there is some momentum there but it's a race. I guess that counts. Screenplay?

I mean is that like a big surprise? Like for us that's fun but that's what I mean. I this is what happened last year. It like it just everything got very clear and then we had kind of a dull night.

Yeah and it feels like we're we may be repeating that that process. Okay so I don't see any. I mean I guess what is screenplay now is an anatomy of a fall versus holdovers? I think so and then adapted is Barbie versus Oppenheimer versus American fiction maybe.

Yeah and I mean but seeing Cordef or American fiction. Yeah by the way American fiction got five nominations. That's a very exciting thing. Yeah or seeing I guess like seeing Greg and O'Bahn back up there for Barbie would be entertaining.

It would be entertaining. Who do you think is going to be seated in the front row? This was kind of related to a question that was asked that has related to me of the future winners. I think that Margot Robbie will be seated.

Do you think so? Yeah not nominated. Well but she was nominated for Barbie. Yeah but it's not gonna win.

Well she's really famous. I know. That's even worse to me than what you pointed out with the globes of giving it the cinematic achievement award for the box office. Yeah I agree but they're you know trying to have their cake and eat it.

I thought RDJ I thought I thought it would be like in the jackets and seat. Okay there there's more than one pharmacy. You know in fact there's like an entire row. But you wouldn't put Robert Taney Jr.

next to Margot Robbie for example and there's like there's a zone a zone of interest one. Okay okay okay so if you're looking if it's the camera shot like from the stage on to the front row in that in that center orchestra section. Who's at the 50 yard line? Who's at the 50 yard line?

It would be Robert Dany Jr. I agree with that but I think you're gonna have Margot Robbie. She's at the 40. No she's on aisle left.

Oh okay. Which is all it's also a prime spot. Yeah yeah we're like when the host comes down and does bits. Exactly.

Yeah and Margot can get involved. Yeah. Wow okay that's interesting. Okay Bob what's next question sorry to jump on that one but it's notable to who we think is going to win.

Jacob asks how are best international feature film contenders selected by other countries? I made a little joke about how it was just a bunch of dudes named Jock in a room for France? Actually not. The US was on the uh the selection committee for France this year.

If the United States got to institute a similar procedure and compete in the category which film do you think would have been selected? That was a fun little wrinkle. Yeah I like that part of the question. Okay Oppenheimer it's really that's not.

You think that question? Yeah yeah yeah yeah. So there's a really great piece in variety called Anatomy of a Fail inside France's dysfunctional Oscar committee by Elsa Kislasi that was published yesterday and goes into the equity. Yeah it's really good and also it has that has like a lot of the the tea if you will about the specific France situation which I think is like funny and also not totally representative.

In general the process is there is like a nominating committee on each country and the names of the committee have to be submitted to the academy by a certain day and it's you know related to like a national film board or luminaire but it's like it can vary. Yeah some countries do it by way of the film industry and some do it in a kind of nationally organized governmental body like a ministry culture will do it sometimes. And then they vote and that like that board votes every year and this year in France it came down to a four three vote between Anatomy of a Fall and the Taste of Things and Taste of Things One and then apparently someone asked if they could change their vote after the fact and that was declined. It's also been noted that Justine Triet when she won the Palme d'Or at Cannes gave a political speech that some of the France's old guard did not seem to appreciate and it became a big deal in France at the time and so it's suggested that the the elder statesman on the French selection committee perhaps had some residual feelings.

I see. Were the contents of the political speech around the film Barbie was it all about Barbie in Margarabe? So I think that's what happened. I we got a lot of questions about this.

Like this isn't the Olympics like do you think France cares that much? No like that's kind of the thing like France has its own like vibrant cinematic like community they have their own awards they like have plenty of things. I don't I don't know if it's the most nominated films one of the most nominated films that the Cesar's the French Oscars is not gonna be a fall. But like first of all just France really care that much whether or not they're winning and no but also it is sort of like the anatomy of a fall was nominated for best picture for best director for like best screenplay.

Why do they care about the international film? You know the nation of France cares even the French film industry. I think people who follow these things closely care because it's clear that the zone of interest of versus anatomy of a falls is a very exciting race and it would be a way to make that race exciting and now it feels decided in some ways and also obviously if anatomy of falls not the infrastructure how could it not be logically the best film out of France from that year according to the voters of the academy? I don't know I also like the first one thing I agree with that was snubbed and I think it would have been very cool to have the taste of things in international film and anatomy of a fall competing in that you know and that seems like a decent strategic play on the part of the this is this is related to a lot of questions around this issue that I think are quite fascinating.

One the taste of things definitely is a little bit more of an old guard selection you know Babitz feast famously one best international feature but it was then best foreign language feature at the Oscars it is a film in that tradition a film more classically composed more stately emotional elegant anatomy of a fall is a very contemporary kind of a film very in your face very not just politically charged but intellectually challenging and it's also a movie that has kind of fit into our modern way of understanding movies and so far as like has been memed or like fancams of sondra holler in that movie so it's a little bit of a bit of me I made every single one of those and distributed them to be a little bit more inspired and they're all set to that PIMP instrumental and so it's got to do a live performance of that like they're cowards they don't have like a whole steel drum choir like walking down the aisle and like dancing and right I made it produce the Oscars so I think I think revealed like the difference and it's not just that the it's not just the old guard of the French selection committee but the old guard of the academy awards in some ways and the academy has changed they want anatomy of a fall that's the kind of movie that they want so the bigger question that is coming up and Bob maybe you can ask it now it's kind of like the how of this thing like and how should it change if it should change yeah there was a follow-up question here from Scott how soon do the Oscars need to change the international feature category roles that limit it to one film per country so this is like a big existential question to me yeah that is related to a lot of what I've been talking about for five years about how they change the academy and by changing the academy they've in some ways negated the international feature film award right you know if parasite can win international feature why does it need to invest or vice versa maybe more appropriately I think yeah more probably I mean it's it is starting to feel a little bit like a JV award yes um so or a little bit like the like the reverse of the popular Oscar award yes the academy is a u.s body but it's so international now and it is understanding international cinema more widely right now you know I will say that we are all of them well I guess that's not your parasite um one best picture and is a Korean film but we are the the races between two european or the films I don't want to get into Brexit right now but the international feature race yes the international feature race um is between uk and the president yeah you've already gotten into climate change and gynecological futures what's up and you're from get into my pain taxes on tambas or diapers for that matter that's not just a women's issue that's a parent issue but like why are we doing party but for second wave feminism I learned while you guys were talking about this justine triage rant was against the neo liberal french government they're cracking down to the protest which at which point I was like give her the fucking Oscar girl i was the man and like you're driving this morning thank you justine um so you could see a world in which the if you allowed multiple countries that the international feature is over indexed on european film in fact it like historically at least two every year at least two often three and sometimes even four of the films are from europe now there's a reason for that there's a a long history and an established industry of european filmmaking so of course films from france films from italy films from places like denmark that have a tradition of cinema are going to be more likely to produce strong candidates the the idea behind limiting it to one country is so that in the event that utan has a compelling candidate or romania or someone that a place that doesn't have as robust an industry could compete and i think that's broadly a good thing but when i start thinking about that it just makes me think that it's a pointless endeavor yeah you know and i'm not saying that this should only be a u.s film awards i think if you want to make the academy the body of world cinema which is what it is slowly creeping towards over time do it and give it a reward i agree or or it feels vestigial at this point it does yes and it doesn't mean that it's not revealing great work by doing so but there's just a way to do it by adding more words which i think is a question that somebody else asked here which we get every year which is like and we are just pro add more awards yeah uh okay about what's next um jonathan wants to know why does it seem like it's here we get fewer increasingly nominated for more awards our voters seeing less movies that they just have more aligned taste it seems like we used to get more outliers jonathan says i don't know if that's actually true but i do think that the machine is smarter so that the pr and marketing forces that are working on this know how to circle the wagons and do the work we alluded to the netflix acting nominations this year that came through nothing against those performances but like netflix is good at campaigning for performances and so it's not surprising that those they just sort of landed on kolmin domingo and jody foster and an anet benning and lo and behold they are there so i think that that's it can't go overlooked how good they are at strategizing at this point right and it does also feel increasingly like a movie does not get made unless it's either in the bucket of ip box office or predetermined awards bait here is our strategy for how we will market this where we will release it how we will campaign everyone so it's a great point i guess i guess jonathan is correct that you you have fewer like total rando movies but that's also just because those movies don't get made at all anymore yeah i i think there's just a has and have not yet very clear way right now and there are fewer big studios than there ever have been uh not necessarily there ever have and then there were 30 40 years ago because of consolidation it's been happening over time which is one of the reasons why like a 24 and neon have been able to compete so much more because there are fewer contenders promoting movies which is i guess related to another question i don't know if we want to go to that question now too but yes relatedly the most asked question in the mailbag was what happened to iron cloth so i wrote this question here from curvy but there was about 15 people who asked any insight as to why the iron clog at absolutely zero nominations seems crazy to me do you think that that is revealing of the listenership of the show that they might have emotional connections to iron cloth yeah or that they're just more aware of it than a lot of people i mean it's doing it's doing good box office but i think it was not aimed at the traditional awards audience i think some of it's strength was that it opened up 824 to new audiences specifically wrestling audiences and it just also was so late in the awards season the release lot they gave it was mid-December and we've talked time and again if that's that is too late combined with the fact that 824 had a lot of great movies this year and they bet on the other horses i guess in the form of past lives and and zone of interest which is like a fascinating one and that campaign defies all of our rules and basically all established understanding of the Oscars but it's an it's exceptional in a lot of ways and we can talk about that we certainly will talk about it soon i think the unusual nature of zone of interest is probably one of the reasons why the iron clog never had a chance and i know that 824 always believed in the zone of interest and this is like a long gestating project and deserved to have the support that i got the big differences that the iron claw did not premiere festival and so there was not this sense of inevitability around things like poor things or my stroke or um you know or zone or i mean almost all of the other titles that are not barbie and op and hammer premiered at festivals we talked about them after having seen them at festivals and excitedly said i can't wait to talk about this for two and a half months until people get a chance to see it that's powerful you know and it's very unusual for a film to get this kind of attention if it doesn't have that kind of blockbuster to be a middle movie you know iron claw i love because it's a middle movie it's what i talk about that we don't have all the time and something i'm really appreciative of and grateful for that we got it but it didn't get to go through the system the same way that rain man went through the system however many years ago which was kind of a middle movie that became a blockbuster in part because of the way that it was celebrated right so you know i guess it's sad i think it was so clear to me that there was a world in which it premiered at taranto wins the audience award zakfron's campaign makes a lot of sense i mean i'd have been ready by then i was also going to ask and it may have been a material but i didn't have a waiver because that's another situation where you get zakfron out it should have a new two to three months before a 24 minute i know but i think the process of getting a waiver and maybe they just did you know but like and so can you give him a magazine cover can you do you know start the heres Dickinson wave like it's a very good point they may have held it specifically for that reason although i didn't stop searchlight from showing poor things at festivals you know like they still did that and then released it in december and that seemed to work yeah but you can't bank on promoting like all those adorable boys frankly in the same way that you did mms mazon what if i just turned to my left to tell you right in zakfron was sitting there i was like can we take a picture for bob i want i want him to see our two incredible adonis like bodys side by side just both of you just flexing the biceps next to each other a little comparison that'd been great uh this is gonna seem obvious for me but it's amazing what a 24 is able to do now it is amazing if you can pull yourself out of the like cult of a 24 and the a 24 film bro idea it's they are this is a small company like this is not a massive version and it's not just film bro three of my five movie like top five movies of the year where a 24 films directed by women so you know i guess it's like film girl bro by a little bit and i'm not it may not be permanent but they have changed hollywood i mean moonlight changed hollywood it's a remarkable thing that happens so pretty cool even though the arnklogist has settled for making 35 million dollars at the box office i guess okay about what's next do you want to go into history a little bit here i know this is a great year for best picture i like all these movies i made a list i have so many i've so many list is so long i was born for this question well we got a question from grace what do you think is the greatest best picture lineup of all time okay what do you think is your race is this your race i don't think so it is not not on twitter i don't think thank god okay i thought that she was but she just didn't check very often i mean it's it's between 75 and 76 right up okay so i think that the conversation probably 75 i think the ring or answer is 76 i think 75 76 and 77 is the greatest consecutive run yeah of best picture nominees i will read those now i don't know if these would be at my winner though so 75 which is the films from 74 is the godfather 2 china town the conversation leney and the towering oh okay i was so you're thinking about it but yeah but i was yeah i was thinking about it but i think that this one has to come first i agree with you but but we were using different reference numbers yes so so the films of 75 yes which occurred in 76 this is probably the most this is the one that everyone points to this is i mean this is it one floor of the kookoo's nest berry linden dog day afternoon jaws and nashville now this is the kind of this is the kind of year that when i was learning about oscar history as a teenager i was like wow the oscars are cool right yoswers are amazing so jaws and one floor of the kookoo's nest which were big movies for me as a teenager and then when you discover nashville at 16 and then you discover berry linden at 19 and then all of a sudden you're like oh my god fucking wow the oscars were so amazing and then you get it to be easy and you're like wow the oscars are so terrible and boring but in the following year in 77 also an incredible lineup rocky winds over all the president's men bound for glory network and taxi driver very exciting stuff yeah and this was when it was only five obviously i have a bunch of other candidates do you have any other candidates you want to cite yeah i do so i guess i'm saying 1968 which honored the films of 1967 okay in the heat of the night bonnie and clide doctor do little why not the graduate and guess who's coming to know there's a wonderful book about this picture of the revolution by marcarois okay um i was looking for a 90s one i have one so the films of 1994 so it would have been 1995 this was on my list yeah forest gum for weddings and a funeral pelt fiction quicio shawshank redemption what's the what's the week one there do you is it for scum um it wasn't obviously in 1994 yeah it wasn't in 1994 but i think that's that's like maybe a little too sineudy film kid of us to i still love forest gum and i am i'm on the eve of doing a live forest of rewatchables what city are you doing that in in the city of washington dc which is just like you special guest hillary clinton joining us i'm really excited about you deserve that um i don't know i like in terms of long-lasting in terms of legacy i would say probably quicio right so pelt and shawshanker forever movies right those are movies that will be loved excuse me for weddings and funerals or forever but i was gonna name that next i was gonna name that next i don't think in terms of the number of people that have seen it and the esteem it is held in it is quite as high as perfection and shawshank that's true but that is what hillary clinton was doing so um but i we did a foreboding spot i really like that movie i really like quicio and it has fallen away i think from as a as i don't know if it was ever great film it was always a film i really liked and i think it was a kind of a pre-sorkinese movie in some ways you know yeah yeah a lot of humans talking in rooms movie i had that one on my list you want me to go through my like super classical ones yes i have because i have some more recent ones as well but yes the let's go let's go back to the films of 1939 i think this is arguably the best the single best movie year of all time gone with the wind one best picture also nominated that year many many films that year dark victory the banny davis film which is an excellent movie good by mr chaps which is okay love affair phenomenal film the only carries movie mr s suspicion once again i'm asking you to watch mr spade okay i will which is i have a fight coming up i mean you don't have to say like that what you know what did you watch on a plane recently that was really rude to the creator yeah if you can watch the creator on his screen and then i put barbie on the screen next to it and we did like two i had another 90s year that was really good okay i think 91 given a 92 is underrated silence the lambs wins that's the last time i made the big sweet in all those categories but also not only that you're giving the beast and i made a film which will very rarely happens that might have been the first ever animated film nominated for best picture maybe there was another disney classic i forgot bugs e weird movie i like it um me my warm baby eric jfk of course yeah masterful and the prince of ties which i think is underrated do you know my prince of ties connection yes the author of family friend yes well he lived next order yes in atlanta growing up and he wrote prince of ties in like the shared like the shared garage because we shared a driveway like behind our house and then would come over all the time and drink our booze and then and when my mom went in to labor with me he was the one who stayed behind the house and you know hit the camera anyway pat is a great friend what's a great friend i'm not running his work but the sedipsation it's like it's like a pretty weird slice of this house yeah nignality is fantastic yeah movie okay a couple of others another 90s one the one preceding the whole fiction years a pretty good year shindler's list the fugitive in the name of the father of the piano and the remains of the day that's a really good lineup i would also say that the year after that 95 is to me cinema this is i don't know you can read the movies but i feel like we're now cresting into nostalgia porn for ourselves sure but brave heart wins over Apollo 13 babe which everyone loves oopistino not so much and sentence sensibility not my favorite year you know what sentence that's really a masterpiece get the fuck out i think we would also be remiss if we did not point out two more recent vintage uh 2007 of course which is no country for old men atonement juneo michael clayton and there will be blood very very good lineup you know it's like a it's like a and atonement it was a noble effort with a lot of rise of the asl i love atonement i know but it for me that's real like it's like one of the great novels and sort of like an impossible to adapt i see um you know three out of five uh and then kind of insane that juneo got nominated for best picture you cannot feel like it's what it fucking it was it's a sensation it was what you mean i saw it when it came out i know what a sensation it was but like critically we were like i was old i came out of high school kids i was 11 bobby are you younger or or older than lord and by how many days older by six months older by six months okay yes so you passed a millennial test once again another example of me beating the gen z allegations and you guys won't acknowledge it okay Sean just calling me four years like i know about juneo come on just admit you've never seen juneo just admit it right here i'm so many times it's not good it doesn't hold up anymore i liked it i liked it i mean it's charming but i'm sure hillary clinton loved it uh yes i agree next question sorry that really three was already for another question 2017 in 2019 uh 2019 is great it does feature a couple of couple of well sure but the highs are pretty high tell me 2019 well 2019 is very good but it has joe rabbit and i actually like joker as you know but i'm not sure if i was like shut absolutely nominated for best picture um so you know yeah and then 2017 i mean i know what was it i forget well i know i know it has the post and three billboards but it had shape of water one over calling by your name darke stower dun kirk get out lady bird fan of thread yeah that's great year that's great year okay you guys just gloss right past four versus four in 2019 oh i'm sorry i'm sorry unbelievable all this work i did it on the show no four versus four i mentioned four versus three strays i sat in james mangold office for two hours speaking with him about the film so i remember i edited that yeah sounded really bad very boomy yeah not nearly enough sound no we sound good together true yeah jim mangal's right next question comes from philip i've noticed a high number higher than usual at least of films embracing the academy aspect ratio as for city poor things solver in my stroke are we in the midst of an academy ratio asance love to know what you'll think do you have that letterbox review that you sent me oh yeah okay i'll read this as much as i can okay so this was a really funny review of solver and by kevin porter pike master kevin porter about of solver he gave the film two stars and he said i don't know who's in charge of handing out one three seven one aspect ratios for movies but it reminds me of when television at the turn of the century started shooting and broadcasting in widescreen think er or the west wing circuit 2001 on our boxy little tv's it gives it gave shows an immediate patina of quality but by just the presence of letterboxing hey that's the name of this website and now we go to widescreen movie theaters and look black bars on the left and right telling you this movie is very important but post-boot-apesto tell this seems to be the trend for movies need to quickly establish they're not like the other girls whoa did the grand boot-apesto tell invent both the academy ratio and the color pink so i think kevin is right i think it's a it's a trick designed to convince you that there is something different and important about the movie i think in some cases it works and in some cases it doesn't i actually think nowadays the films that are shot at academy ratio should be the opposite of our expectations they should not be sweeping movies with grand vistas they should be smaller films like you know movies recent movies that were shot in academy are like eda or american honey you know movies that are the kind of like the confinement or elephant the gossantan movie about school shooters like movies like that i think are well served by that format movies that are trying to look like dramatic stories that have a big canvas but are boxed in yeah i don't think works very well can i posit one more theory though i think that kevin porter review is hilarious and spot on his version i thought of um yeah on instagram it's it's friendlier with a box here clip i mean i think that was a major major part of of sulfur and and i assume tikkok as well you know even though i don't really that's that's not so that's more to you maybe i guess it's both yeah okay good question what's next serita asks do you think netflix garner nods simply because it's easier to fire up your tv than dig out a screening link some more voters watch my star one particularly nyad was a bit over indexed with its acting not i do not know i think the netflix has a very talented work team we're really good at what they do okay and and they have a lot of resources they spend a lot of money though interestingly i heard i've remembered that they're pretty like stingy about the per diem that they give actors and act for public appearances and that sort of thing and like it costs a lot of money to look that good every day all the time in front of thousands of cameras that that might be wrong or that might just be smart budgeting but yeah they are very very good at getting people out and making people aware particularly as you noted of the actors i think a film being widely seen by the public and then generating conversation is very helpful for awards campaigns because there is at least a sense that you are you were able to understand what audiences like or don't like about a movie and then you can kind of strategize against that but in terms of academy voters there is a beautiful academy portal and every academy member can very easily log into that portal and watch every single movie that is submitted and a lot of movies are submitted and there's no private placement necessarily um so if you're interested in movies and you vote it's not like well this is on netflix and this is on who doesn't really work that way also you wouldn't believe that customer service on these like bespoke streaming sites it's really amazing shout out to all the people who have to answer the phone at like 10 45 on a Tuesday night because i can't get my like whatever link and they're so nice and they talk you through every single like password reset so it's not even technical difficult it's a lot of money in use i know but like i like imagine being the person who is always so friendly when they answer the phone just being like did you check this band folder for your password reset yeah that's a real thing that happens what's next mario asks what would it take for an animated feature film to be nominated for a big five award will it ever happen i don't think actor actors will ever happen like under any circumstances i think it's a shame i think this is another example where new categories to honor this specific type of work would be wonderful agree i think this is a great way to get Bradley Cooper's Oscar you bring rocket raccoon back we show the world the work he's done is he he's gone well james guns guardians of the galaxy is gone because he's with dc now okay so you know what a loss uh i mean you're like the only person i know that you and your husband the only two people i know they don't really thank you for recognizing well i've had many conversations about this as well uh i animated movie it can happen of course it's gonna happen yeah i think that the shifting nature of the membership seems to have actually hurt animated films disabilities to get in while it has helped lots of other kinds of movies abilities to get in but someone's gonna come along work it wasn't giemo del Toro you know but someone's gonna come along and make an animated feature that can be the old work you know the politician of this and you know that i liked that his minokio but i could be a movie like getting the piece which is sort of an undeniable classic um when one of those comes along again she loves reading it's it's great that they let women read you know i feel like all the work that hiller clinton did to make that happen it's just an absolute wonderful we thank her for her service what's next question oh wait it's too much for you Bob is i will not i will not be tempted to be on the record on the podcast that this many people listen to about hiller re-rotting clinton i won't do it i'm not gonna do it jake up ass it's fine i read ronim i read everything i read ronim i've imagined all the possibilities oh just trying to get to jake up's question now that the mission impossible oscar curse has been broken do you think we're any closer to stunts being recognized by the academy in some way i gotta be honest i didn't realize it had never been nominated until earlier this week and so let me know that i didn't realize they had never gotten a nomination it's pretty weird i mean again the academy has blind spots like including most of what makes movies good so that's pretty annoying just best sound how did it never get into best sound over the years this movie sounds brilliant and they had two sound categories yeah really strange um i god they really got to do it you know in in the nfl and in the mv okay okay this is i think this is i think this is insightful um there's something called the competition committee that meets every off season and they talk about the rules of the games and they change the rules yo you cannot bring in the nfl rules as like an example of hope and improvement that shit is so insane just call me i will tell you what it catches like what are we doing it's 45 minutes and it's just like well the ball bobbled like this and his knee was bent this way it's so insane like she's cooking it so much worse did you use cocaine before the recording be honest you can tell me do you know do you know do you know no this is me do you want to know how many hours days weeks of my life i have lost to reviewing the call at the end of an nfl game or equal opportunity here at the end of a fucking nda game which is always 45 minutes for two minutes of play i uh the rules committees are not helping us i i just want to say i'm not advocating for say replay when it comes to the voting in the academy of words i'm just saying we can't trust these issues with the review process just can't trust these people but also like come on the halftime rules for the nfl like fucking figure not half time the overtime just you know like i can figure it out it's unfair do you have water in your mind i think um i think all i was gonna say was that no one thinks they're good i know i look at twitter i'm you're making a very valid point but that is not what i was trying to conjure by making drawing this conclusion which was just that there's a group of people that need to talk about whether things work wait and and they don't make good decisions okay so you think that if the competition committee for the oscars method would decide to not have a best-known Oscar well they have like eight different competition committees it's the boards of governors and it's the subcommittee about this and then it's that you know like they just you've been unleashed what happened who are you mad at your man the nfl yes is that like a bad thing do you know it's why are you are you throwing up the organization i love yeah i know i know that you like um you like sport you know i do like sport but you hate the jets um your quarterback's errand rudder so good luck and like you know that they make bad decisions and that none of the rules make any sense it's all part of the fun okay it's just like the Oscars that's my point no i know but i'm just like i don't i don't trust them to improve it i think that they should put us in charge again i don't disagree uh okay about what's next who would you have nominated and hypothetical best first feature and best breakthrough performer awards this question comes from dave uh i made a whole letter box list for uh davey future cool don't watch what do i happen you've you've sat oh my god she's with so much sauce on that that was seriously what i do is i i mentioned the i think i think if you're under the age of 30 i really enjoy your letter box presence and then that's right five of you you've got two more years three more years two and a half two years yeah and then after that you got to grow up and you got to use a google doc okay unfortunately i use both but i'm a masterful free to list my debuts these would be my nominees celine song past lives obviously never run on my list um the philipo brothers talk to me oh right yeah you love that jewel taylor they cloned time run oh good good one um reynell and miller ryleen and michael bjord and kree three i also thought about michael bjorden kree three because it got released so early in the year last year and also because of the awful jonathan major story over the course of 2023 uh was almost like memory hold in some way like we never talked about it didn't come up obviously it was not competing for anything but i thought the movie was good not great but the direction was very promising like i thought jordan actually was better director than an act and then a performer in that movie in some ways and showed that he's got some some good ideas about how to make a film okay here's mine celine song cord jefferson american bjord totally forgot about cord rain out of a miller ryleen cevan leaf earth mama i had her a long list and cloy de mott for fair play also my long list good year for davius yep as far as break through performance to me this is pretty easy obviously dominica s and charles melton were quote unquote snubbed and were terrific this year uh to you also from past lives um i never seen before i guess the breakthrough and sort of in my experience movie watcher uh marshall lynch in bottoms and abby ryter fortsen in are you there god it's me margot i wanted to add just would katley spaney qualify for debut for you thought about this i feel like she's done a bunch of stuff i know she's never had like a big lead part like that so it depends on how to find breakthrough i i and i guess we would need to be exact about that but i sort of think it counts katley spaney appeared in the film pacific rim uprising did you see that one i don't know did i there's a different room from yeah it's a sequel i don't think i saw the stars john boyega and katley spaney and scott eastwood okay well i don't think she broke through in that okay just give me these categories what i know it's really not it's not hard okay what's next about let's do a couple more chris asks if you were the head of an independent or mid-sized studio and you had to pick a 2024 release date for one of your movies and if oscar success was your number one priority which window would you be looking at in order to maximize its chances i'm throwing a flag on the question which is that oscar success being your number one priority does not exist okay that's not a thing that anybody is like our number one goal here is to win in academy what if it's yours mind personally in this hypothetical well that's what i mean it's a hypothetical that is impossible but if that was the case i guess i would say october yeah i was going to say october eleventh in limited and then because that's not yeah i know you expand it yeah expanding into thanksgiving yeah i think that's the i think that's the way to go i think that's what they should do it's more or less what the holdovers that i would have done a little differently with the holdovers in particular because it was a christmas movie so to me i would have actually platformed holdovers in november and gone wide on like december 18th no i still i still think you got to do it earlier it's christmas it's just like an absolute wasteland why do you guys choose that the last two years so op-and-himmers obviously summer block western movie i think that's sort of an exception because christopher nolan is unique and then everything ever at once i started was february so it's been a little while since october was like the winning window do you think that it still just remains or and then the last two are just i think it's all ours the last two are definitely outliers but they could signal a change that is coming we don't we just don't know yet so in my heart october is like the aftermath of festival season so you're able to build buzz for a month and then show the movie to the world which i think is a pretty critical component at this point of course some exceptions yeah and i mean looking at this years list you've got two summers in barbie and op-and-himer you've got one sundance to to me june i think in past lives you've got three limited release octobers in an animal fall holdovers and what the killers immediately go why it did it not over but then in october and then you've got three festivals to late-December in american fiction poor things and some interest poor things original plan to is september eighth limited it was gonna go wide in october in november right so i still think that the studio still feel this is the best path forward and that's how they'll do it going forward but when op-and-himer and barbie happens but like i mean never happen again you know we'll see donna asks if you could swap out one acting nominee in each category which nominee would you jettison and who would be their replacement so easy okay you go first sure uh in best actor goodbye bradley cooper hello and just got oh interesting you would keep comin domingo and take out bradley yeah i i didn't think rusted was very good or i just like it's like i wish i would have been better honestly because it's a very cool story and um i like could have been a lot more like complicated and just something that looks very good yeah but he's very good in it i really like him i didn't realize he's like the second openly gay actor to ever be nominated for best actor uh yeah the first since een mckellan yeah which i know like i'm not good but that's you know that obviously has meaning so i andrew scott would also have been that if you were nominated true that's oh yeah well then then we would have to look at that yep so god forbid bradley cooper is very very good in my strow i still think that maulersene is like one of the most amazing things of the year and we've all established how i feel about i just if i have to make room places i'm making room with my strow i get it i would take on and make it out it's nothing against him i just think that that movie and even that performance is a very kind of by the numbers uh biopic kind of role for me and um the period of time that captures of course is incredibly important in american history but that doesn't make a good movie and i thought second front was way better i thought that andrew scott was way better yeah i just i enjoyed what they did more i would rather see either of them um but there's a demingos nomination is this working away uh there probably were a bunch of others that i thought should have been competing there were never even on the table but um i don't know i feel like it's just been a two horse race for a long time too so it ultimately doesn't matter that much in actor what about in actress what would you do i can get rid of two people um again an ebony you've done so much for me i do not think that nyan was my favorite of your performances so goodbye to nyan to an ebening and you can do well really either margarabi or gretta lee which is one of the i didn't i don't think we said bretta lee's name on the choosing contest and that was real bremmer i thought she was incredible in past lives um and i would have loved to see her there so pogretta lee in for an ebening and then her cue score went way up this season which means now she'll be nominated for less good performance than she sure that's the oscar way um and then speaking of my stroke i said it earlier goodbye kara maligan hello margarabi i would easily take out an ebening um which is not to deny it is bad or that her performance is bad but another movie ultimately didn't work for me and i thought that even though what she did was clearly very physically challenging i thought it was a performance with one note um and i didn't feel that way but july foster's performance i would put tayana taylor in from uh thousand one which was just one of my favorite movies last year and i thought she was complete revelation i hope she gets a lot more stuff to do supporting actor albert first scam my boi glenn hollerton in there from blackberry uh this is a good one i don't know who to cut though ruffalo i would probably cut ruffalo too i liked him in four things a lot did i like it's kind of a similar role to wickland hollerton doing blackberry actually in terms of the yelling and the over the the the bigness of the performance but i just i thought that was amazing so i'm doing jimmy bell from all of us strangers but also in the place of of ruffalo supporting actress oh great my god i'm freaking out this is good i actually forgot to look at this so we can do it now live on the thing that's supporting us oh yeah i take a one over over and over and over and over and we yeah yes yeah even though i i really i i love emily blood as an actor and i want good things for her instead of like 40 times in the same emily knows she's been listening along every episode she heard you six months and i'm happy that she's finally nominated for you know she should have been nominated for double worst product but mario coppins returns oh yeah she was actually very good at that um yeah she's funny i think so okay so yeah i'll take it away from her i would put in uh what i thought should have happened and probably all came close happening which is julie and more over america for yeah i just don't it's a shame i happen to me December so i'm happy for semi-burch okay one more question about it what do we got so this is kind of a related question that i thought was interesting because we don't spend that much time talking about it when we talk about who gets snobed in the acting categories but harry asked how do each of you actually judge a performance are you looking for particular things or are you just gauging how lost in the character you end up being and afoula how do you think the academy judges that question for me personally it's always the latter yeah how lost in the character you end up being i don't have i know a little bit about acting technique and i've read about it and i have a couple of friends who are actors but i don't i don't use uh my critical lens is not against the how but the feel like how it makes me feel in terms of someone disappearing so to speak or just convincing me that we have entered the world through their eyes um but i don't think the academy necessarily judges that way i think there's like a degree of difficulty thing that often comes into play what do you think yeah especially from actors themselves who understandably are watching it from the different perspective of either knowing the skill set evaluating the skill set differently you know and there are different schools of acting some people really respond to big performances and lots of capital a acting and showing and the physical transformation and all that sort of stuff and and whether that's because that's the kind of acting they they do or that's just what jumps out to them so again it is i think they judge it differently in terms of probably more having a specific checklist and then also what speaks to you in terms of the style um i tend to i'm like you i just judge it on does the performance is it is it like what you walk out talking about because it holds your attention good questions do you want to just do this last one really quick for dogs oh yeah um Matthew said not a question about the Oscars per se but i would like to just hear a man to cook for however long she wants about the new yorker so she had a cool profile specification so here's the first thing i want to say and this goes to the new yorker and not to Rachel sine who wrote the piece and i thought did a wonderful job and has no control over when it runs we're not a ton of control but what are we doing after so strange so strange i don't i don't really understand that goes into it you know things get delayed or whatever i'm sure and and i think they have a different agenda but once and once after the release of the movie though and after basically we had an entire fall of sofia and i know the new yorker likes to have the last word but um i rose my my eyebrows rose about anyway this rules i thought this was a really really great snapshot of what it's like to or what i imagine that it's like to be in sofia's world i haven't sofia is not a woman of a lot of words and i think that the words that it got were very funny and memorable and used well and then just in terms of the reporting of the amount of access and the secondaries i thought all of this stuff about her mom elinor copa who's a filmmaker and on right was um really interesting and moving and it's not as often explored when you're talking about sofia copa is working what she inherited from her parents as filmmakers um notice like an amazing presence of uh chauffeured black cars just waiting for her at all times which is pretty great and then obviously the detail where jane campian and sofia copa are both jurors at can and sofia offers to style jane campian and then the next day to giant boxes of phybe file or saline show up in jane campians room there's there's no one there's no one cooler better in the world that is just fucking awesome this has been the sofia copa minute on the big picture thanks all the listeners let's take a quick break okay we're back i want to speak about sundance with you briefly i'm participating in a virtual sundance experience i would love to uh i hate unfortunately you didn't neither of us are in parks to be this year i'm thinking about going back next year i'm not totally sure about that yet but um this year i virtual sundance a lot of the big titles are not available and i also unfortunately had to miss a bunch of pre-screenings so i missed a lot of the hot titles but i could have seen this is a great podcast i'm really glad that we're doing that well i'm bringing it up because there are a couple of very very notable titles that are still available for people if they want to watch them virtually we have not yet seen the awards but also in the awards are now so those films are made available sometimes to watch virtually as well people are wondering what should i see what's coming up later this year i think that there's some value in talking about them of the big ones that we didn't see presence the new steven seaderberg film of great interest to both of us was sold to neon this is steven seaderberg's quote unquote ghost story uh told from the perspective of a spectral being has that sound to you i will watch anything that steven seaderberg releases even though as i say that i'm realizing i got to catch up on a couple tv shows but that's okay i'll do it yeah where you want full circle i as i said i have to catch up on a couple tv shows however i did listen to his podcast appearance on the new york times book review podcast with our pal gilbert grews where he just talks about all of the books that are on his culture diary like truly my dream i'm not listening to that like what's up the scene for us what were you doing i actually i was like at home lying down and instead of taking an app i was like i'm just gonna put this on but it was like lasting for my phone no airpods my husband came in and was like what was going on anyway he's self-care that's what was going on he reads to de-stress much like myself i'm very happy for both um i seems like not very de-stressful films though otherwise the festival right i saw the tv glow a huge one premiere from jane shone run who made a film a few years ago called we're all going to the world's fair it was a huge hit this is apparently this is usually the most acclaimed film out of the festival uh film about trans identity in the relationship to the culture that we consume so should be interesting one i'm very excited to see that uh the outrun is a new film star star star ronin seeing a lot of awards pundits saying lock it in best actress how do you feel it's always a good idea to lock it in on jane ryan 25th that just really works out well a couple others that were getting a lot of acclaimed will and harper which is this new documentary with will ferrell and one of his best friends harper whom he met while working at snl who has since come out as trans and they go on a journey across america together and meet people and talk about their lives and their experiences that got moving out of long loud standing ovation at sundance haven't seen that likewise i haven't seen supermanic christopher story um which is still also not acquired but it is what it says on the label our friend crayc warbeck from the ringer saw it said it was very very powerful and good um i did see a few things i'm going to say a few things these are just these are shawn things that i liked one in a violent nature this is the face we're making right now a very deranged horror movie oh good it is slow cinema and it is almost like world of warcraft but following a slasher serial murderer who has been conjured from the dead so like the whole movie is basically following a man walking through the woods killing people let me tell you it fucking rocked just a rock so hard it's definitely in the morning okay definitely like maybe like right maybe just put alice down for a nap it had been sunday at like noon 1230 are you going to the ado for that i watched it in the living room with my airpods and on my tv it was fucking awesome do you turn the lights off it like i closed the shades yeah but then you turn the lights off crushing a bag of pretzels just living my best life my best life it was a very very interesting horror movie very very glacialy paced purposefully but with amazing kills i had a recommend so we had a shutter movie coming later this year um i saw a really good documentary about divo directed by christmas love divo i saw girl girl state the sequel to boy state and it is very much the kind of inversion what we saw in boy state the jesse moss and a manimic bane documentary about basically how our government systems are created for young people and then those young people go on to become killer kwan presidents and vice presidents and secretaries of state metal and all bright herself was a product of girl state and sinor stand it uh speaking of world of work that's not what we call evilin when it explains to you hopefully without ruining it it's a really interesting documentary struck by benjamin re it's about a young boy in the netherlands who has a muscular degenerative disease and it's a very sad film and very early in the film we learned that um you know he's died at the age of 25 and that his body has been you know so it's effectively deteriorating over a period of time and he was in a wheelchair and um did not have a big social life and as he got older increasingly his life went into time spent on the computer gaming after he dies his parents send an announcement on the blog that he wrote that he had passed away to let his the people who read the blog know that and when they did that they started getting hundreds of emails from people who knew him online and the way that they knew him was that he played a world of warcraft and that he was a member of a community in world of warcraft online and of course in world of warcraft or role playing game you choose your avatar and then you exist in this open world and you encounter people that are also playing the game and they discovered a log of every interaction that he had ever had that was captured by the community of the game so they could see the way that he talked to the people in this world and the friends that he made in this world that a lot of these people would gather together to spend time together because they became friends with world of warcraft but he never joined them because of his condition and maybe some shame he felt about that but because they had this log the filmmakers in the game world of warcraft recreated the experiences that he had in this world so you watch the game being played out of his life i've never seen anything like this is remarkable it totally changed my perspective on what we think of when we think of somebody who is gaming who is in their parents basement who is an incel who is whatever you know negative connotation we think that that has it this was a lifeline this was like it was salation for somebody who couldn't experience the world the way we can incredible phone it's like it's the reason why non-djection is so interesting to me i thought it was really really great i'd highly recommend that i believe i want to say netflix acquired it and that was a little come out later this year uh two other ones that i'll cite before we pit our conversation is not interesting you can hear me stop uh speechifying at you one is called good one i think you should definitely see this uh it starts you by a woman in india donaldson it's about a 17-year-old girl who is going on what seems to be an annual hike with her father and one of his best friends and usually his best friend son joins them but in this case he has decided not to the friend has just gone through a divorce the father and the daughter have a complicated relationship loving but complicated and it's just a movie about three people hiking through the woods and it seems all very normal until it isn't very closely observed kind of classic sundance movie in that the scope of it is fairly modest it's a small cast it's a family story a lot of things you think of anything of sundance but there's a turn that is very very powerfully told uh so highly recommend good one and then the last one i think actually is relevant to the zone of interest it's called a real pain it's the second film directed by jesse isenberg the one of my favorite actors i was not such a fan of the first film he directed um this movie starts here in colcan and isenberg as two cousins who go on a heritage trip to poland in the aftermath of their grandmother's death because she wanted them to go visit where she came from which is i think near lublin poland and the film becomes about this complicated relationship between these two cousins who are once close but have grown apart it's a major platform for curinco and and his just genius charisma he's like remarkable and and like it's a perfect vehicle for the kind of like lovable hatable ball of energy that he is jim brilliantly written character but in this heritage tour they walk through their grandmother was a survivor of the holocaust in of world war two and they walk through a concentration camp and tour and tour all these historic landmarks of world war two so very funny sad kind of emotionally volatile movie thought it was a huge step up for isenberg as a filmmaker um and he also his performance is also really really really good well observed too um but i i never when i sat down watch the movie i never would have thought that this would be a perfect double feature with the zone of interest just seeing who's starring in in the fact that it takes away some contemporary times and um but it they've really are matched in some strange ways about the way that we think about what happened at that time what our understanding and relationship is to world war two and more specifically what happened um to jus in germany and poland and throughout europe so i guess i can use that as a way to kind of lead into the zone of interest conversation which if you haven't seen that movie and don't want to know anything about it because it's still only playing this like i'm a theorist of course we understand but it is as we've been saying one of the most unusual embracing best picture nominees in a long time there was a lot of questions about how this movie actually got nominated because of the fact that it was not terribly well seen by the public i think it is a testimony not just to the studio but to the writer director jonathan glazer who even though he has not been in academy darling has a very very strong reputation as a true artist and when he makes something he only made four movies and roughly 25 years as a director when he makes something and it has something to say and he's done it for a good reason so this movie is based on novel by martin a mr. mr. star's christian fredell and sondra holler it's shot by luka zoll the great sonotographer who's shot pop of public house keys movies it's about a family living in outreverts poland right on the outskirts of the concentration camp it's not just any family it's the family sort of the first family of that concentration camp because the christian fredell character riddle hoss manages overseas runs the concentration camp and it's almost like a slice of life movie in some ways it's shot very documentary style we see the kind of the now nature of their lives the things that they enjoy and love we actually haven't really talked about the zone of interest that much despite it coming up so much what did you think of this movie you have described it several times as as an art piece and i think on tuesday's podcast you said it's sort of the least commercial of john think lazors films which are not that commercial any of them they're excellent and i those are the right turns it is not a movie where a lot of plot happens as you said it's a slice of life it is focused on this family and you're just watching them doing stuff and but also what you're not watching or not seeing is as important to what is happening in the film so this is a film about the guy who ran ashwets and a family who lives next ashwets and references are made to what is happening to the jewish people in prison in ashwets and there are sounds and there are other kind of visual hints but you don't actually see you do not go on the other side of the wall it is all about this family's ability to ignore or deny what is happening and they're just total separation from it and then asking questions about how we as people deny or separate from these things and like from horrors and from our own evil versus can you really and is it they're always there lurking i think it's incredibly powerful i do think it's sort of like an experience art piece i saw it for a second time and i responded to it a little less strongly the second time around but i think so much of that is because of the shock of what you are seeing or not seeing the first time and what you're sitting through what you're imagining what you're watching is really unique and startling and upsetting and this the second time once you kind of know what really awful gross disturbing set pieces you know or moments are coming like you lose that element of surprise so there is there is something really contained about it but it's it's a hard movie to love but it's pretty astonishing to watch yeah something i heard from a lot of people after i saw it at teleirad when they walked out of theater was well i'm never watching that again because it is very immersive and because it's a little bit harder the first time you see it to kind of understand the decisions that have been made to tell the story it also ends in a very kind of inconclusive and subtextual way and because of that it's not like well he made his grand statement obviously the the point of view is very clear in the movie which is that the strategy of the movie is to make it seem very contemporary in the way that it is shot in the way that it is framed and even in the way that it is cut which is almost like a reality show in some ways you know the film has a kind of panopticon feeling like you're in the show big brother and you're looking into every room inside of this house right the cameras are fixed and so you move from like the camera that looks down the hallway to the camera that looks into the kitchen to the camera that looks outside it is elegant digital surveillance footage and because of that it's trying to take you out of the feeling of like a museum piece you know like an old tiny fussy experiential it's not 1917 in other words you know that there's no thrill ride to this devastation that it is purely just the people effectively either enacting within the confines of the walls or ignoring as you said the horror that is going on outside you know Johnny Byrne the sound designer was on the show we talked about the ways in which they created the sound scapes that surround the movie and surround this residence in Poland and it's incredibly upsetting I think it was something like it's over 600 pieces of audio that were integrated into the sound library and you know people screaming and devastation the film the second time I saw it I really felt was this kind of churning mechanical industrial sounds that is always happening and it is either the train arriving to drop people or or load people into the concentration camp or it's the machines it is it is the ovens which you know this movie has been criticized and some people think that you know not saying what happens or acknowledging it is a failure of the movie and I think you're it's a point yeah I mean it is the point of the movie but if it doesn't work for you that's totally valid but like that is and the experience and that is one of the first things that caught me because it's just it's sort of it's not that different from a white noise machine but there's like something going on and they're they're filmmaking there are a few kind of moments of interruption and and purposeful moments of the film not working as like the reality TV moment where it's like a black screen and the meekly vise horror or whether it's the stylistic shift exactly um to make you to really bring you into examine okay like what is that and why is this happening and like is the film broken or is there is like the projection wrong or is there something going on here and the the the humming you have that moment of being like oh my god is that the thing is that the crematorium you know and and then you like become aware that it is and this sound is like astonishing and the most significant version of that but there are you know visual moments of it is of it as well where it just like pops up on the edges whether it is the train and the smoke from the train I mean you find yourself at one point trying to be like well what kind of smoke is that which is an absolutely horrifying thing to be asking and then you even I even had that moment of being like oh my god like is that the question that I'm asking myself right now like what am I what am I watching so it's I mean it's really it's really intellectual exercise this movie and you have that like as you're watching it it's a movie that asks you to do something that most movies and especially most awards movies don't want you to do which is to kind of think about how it was made and why it was made in the way that it is those kind of interruptions that you're saying for the for example the film opens with a black screen and holds on a black screen for an extended period of time so much so that I know this is true for our friends person. Many people who see the movie are like is this supposed to be happening like as the projector broken is something you might feel.

Which yeah the movie you know takes place within these walls of this residence and there's a beautiful garden and Sondra Höhler's character is obsessed with her garden and with taking care of the plant life the garden life inside of these walls which is of course a contrast to the way that she has no care for the humanity outside the walls but there's a moment where there is a series of zoom ins into these flowers and then a slow zoom hits us on a red flower and the screen goes completely red and we hear this complex score sound that mixes with burns sound design and it's doing exactly what you're saying it's taking you out of the movie purposefully to make you aware of this is this the decisions it's making. I think for some people this will be considered a pretentious choice and will not work for them. There are some very smart critics who have really not responded to this movie at all who do not like the what they feel is a kind of thuddingly obvious and inert approach to revealing this truth that the filmmaker sees. For me that was not the case I thought it was incredibly powerful.

Second time I saw it I did think much more about the kind of structural choice and I thought more actually about the characters and the decision that they made in the way that they portrayed this particular period of the Haas family in their life because you know real Haas was a real person he was the real person who oversaw the death of millions of people he was a understood as a ruthlessly efficient commandant for the for the Nazis. The movie shows him at this kind of crisis point where in a very perverse way he and his family have at this moment in time what everyone wants or at least is that our common understanding of city american dream which is a successful career a happy large family five children beautiful home dream job so to speak and content meant that even surrounded by this devastation this is a happy family even though there are some things that are happening at the surface that are not so happy between the members of this family and then he gets a transfer order to change jobs and he's being sent to Oran and which is very far from where they're living and sonder hollers character is devastated by this because she too is living her dream life she has her dream home she is the quote unquote queen of Auschwitz and I wasn't really registering the story of the film very much the first time that I watched it but now as I watch it again as I read more about Haas who is quite a significant historical figure he's been portrayed in a series of novels over the years he was portrayed in bond against mother knight he's portrayed in styrens so he's choice he was in the Nuremberg miniseries in 2000 and he was hanged for his crimes just four years after this one takes place at Auschwitz it's the last public execution that transpired at Poland he's in and he's one of the arch criminals of the third right he is one of the people who you know if it wasn't him sure it would have been someone else but choosing to make this about him particularly because the novel that Martin Evans wrote is not specifically about him he is one of the he inspires one of the characters but this decision is really critical which is to say that this kind of fascism and genocidal violence happens because it benefits people there are people that have benefits and like this movie is time spent with those who benefited from that while ignoring everything else was around them so when I recriticism of the structure of the story or the way that this is told I felt like once you repeal away the big brother style filmmaking you peel away that soundscape you peel away the score you peel away those cuts to black or the thermal imaging we see of the young Polish girl who's delivering apples to camp people in the camp overnight the all of these formal choices that are made in the movie I actually think that there's still a really thoughtful and compelling story inside of the movie about this family coming apart in a way but what they're coming apart over is obviously heinous you know it's awful so actually the second time I watched it I don't know if I quote up like it more but I think I more clearly understood its structure that helped me figure out what the intention was yeah it's true and in my second viewing a scene that I think you're it's really stood out to me that speaks to exactly what you're talking about which is that once Rudolph Haas gets the transfer order he tells his wife Hedwig played by Senator Hooler and she's very upset and they go to like the the local river or whatever and they have they have like a marital fight and it's the Hedwig character who she says both like we're doing exactly what the fjurr told us to do this is we're living the life that we're supposed to and also I don't want to give it up and it's great and so you go do whatever you have to do but I'm staying here and there is this just insane it's not even like a denial because there is just something so like empty and selfish and horrifying and you know it is true just like evil in the way that she's just like no I this is this is what we're supposed to be doing and I'm successful and I'm happy here and it like I don't know if you interpreted it as he seems even I guess they're having a marital fight and he's not questioning what he's doing at all I don't think that's ever supposed to be implied but she that character is like maybe actually the true villain of the of the movie in a lot of ways that scene really stood out to me the second time around yeah I think the choice to portray her in the way that they did reveals that the people who were supporting the people who were you know working for the SS or you know were in command in some way also benefited from it and the ways in which they benefit like there's a very critical scene early in the film where all of these belongings coats and clothes are delivered to the house and there are all of these women who are gathered together who were having coffee and they're clearly the belongings of of people from the camps and their clothes have been stripped or their clothes have been stolen from their homes their jewelry and head vig in particular gets a fur coat and the camera we follow her up the stairs of her home she gets upstairs and she stands in her room and she puts on the fur coat and she kind of models it for herself and she's wearing someone who's being murdered less than half a mile from her home wearing her fur coat and she also she pulls out a lipstick yes tries on the lipstick and then knows to remove it once she's tried it on and had her private moment of will to suit me yes so this is a a venal selfish awful person who's raising children in this environment and not giving them any context there's also a fascinating moment in the film where her mother comes to visit her and she shows her all of the success we've all been there right we've all had them own our parents come to visit us and we're so proud you know i did it you know i got my home i got my apartment i got my job look at me i did it here's me my children this is so great can you believe i'm on and over time after she's you know talked about how proud she is of what she's accomplished and how much she loves the home she lives in the mother overnight observes that churning sound that black smoke in the sky that fire that that evil like redness that we see beyond the walls of the camp and she picks up and leaps in the middle of the night she doesn't even say about her own daughter because she knows how awful this place is how awful this world is right and that is after in in that scene um when head big is showing her the garden they have absolutely chilling really like small talk conversation where the mother's like oh so they're over there and she's like i wonder if this i can't remember the person saying but a jewish person that i know is over there i used to clean her house i got outbid on her curtains so it's like it's not like the mother is you know like the the moral compass sure like she is also but there is something about she is she is like absolutely there were limitations but limitations even for her or she doesn't have the ability that they have to actually like physically deny what is what is going on with this mass structural engineer devastation that was this time in history that by 1943 things were so mechanical in their execution they see one sequence where hoss is meeting with some functionaries who explain to him how this oven will work more effectively and they'll be able to shift the temperature from one chamber to another so that they can work more efficiently killing it's insane um you know obviously the film is a profound reminder it's not a movie that tracks Hitler and Hitler's rise you see a lot of movies like that you know they were you understand how the rise of power can operate inside of a fistic society this is about the people who are making the decision to kill more effectively and it's very upsetting you know glazer in talking about the film has constantly said this is about right now like this is how things like this are happening right now maybe they are not happening at the kind of like um instant magnitude of this but that he feels very strongly about how the world has shifted back towards a kind of fistic approach that we ignore death we ignore the toxicity of our world um I I wanted to talk to you about the sort of like final act of the movie where hoss takes this new job where he's sort of working in more of an office environment for lack of a better word um he has like accepted his transfer he's being the efficient employee that he needs to be to survive inside of this environment and you know he learns that in fact like he's being transferred back and he's kind of gotten what he wants near the end of the film he has this phone call during a party in an office with Hedwig and he excitedly tells her about how things are going how well he's doing and the fact that he's coming back and she's very tired and she's not happy about it she is actually she has her dream life at home without having to even deal with him she has her family she has all her belongings she has her state and she's all set and then the film takes another sudden turn where we see him observing the party in the exiting and we start seeing images from modern day Auschwitz we see you know inside of the chambers which are being cleaned we see the wall of shoes um we see like the remains of there's another yeah there's an exhibit that is just a countless number of shoes there's uh one that is of suitcases um but there but there is an museum setting and everything is like behind glass and um controlled and presented and then you see saffers at the museum you know cleaning what did you think of this and so we should also say it's intercut with the Rudolph Haas character walking down a staircase and he seems to be physically gonna ill over it come yeah and he's not actually he's I mean he's dry heaving sorry to not have it like more like high high brow description of what's going on but he is he's dry heaving and then it cuts to this kind of coda and then it cuts back to him collecting himself and to keep walking down the stairs I think I'm so overwhelmed the first time that I wasn't I wasn't really sure right I guess I didn't have an opinion I I thought a lot about the killers the flower moon coda the second time that I watched it and I thought that it was like a very different way of saying a similar thing um and I have I have thought about those movies these two movies contain a lot I mean they are both about genocide they approach the subject very differently they approach emotions and the audience very differently but I I it worked for me in terms of it asks questions about you know like the the banality of remembrance also and and and and what really can any other person do when thinking about or talking about or like being near these things it's just kind of like we're all just going back going about our lives in one way or another there's like there's no there's no toning there's no making it okay there's no like undoing it yeah I the kill of the farm in comparison is very smart because there's one key difference to me when I watch this movie especially the second time I thought okay this is clearly a demonstration of the way that we manage and kind of clean history to display it you know that we kind of even just collecting items and putting them in a container yeah and saying here are all of the shoes it contextualizes it but you can't really recreate its horror like there's no way as a filmmaker to make the holocaust visually makes sense um kills the farm and tries to do it and Martin Scorsese is a filmmaker who with more of a comfort with violence and comfort with visceral exploration and we see a lot of scenes early in that film of Native American folks of Osage members being shot in the head and it is bracing and that is the way that those murders transpired it's obviously quite different from the holocaust but in some ways it's not. Scorsese tries to portray it until he doesn't and Glazer doesn't even try he doesn't it's not the point necessarily but it's not the best way to execute the idea of the film it's interesting I never really seen anything quite like it until I saw I saw the iceberg movie where we also see a giant case full of shoes and I'm sure there are other movies that I'm not remembering that showed us elements of these the kind of museum of vacation of these places were devastating things transpired but I thought it was a very bold stroke and I know I could feel the people I was walking out of the movie with the second time not happy with the way that it ended just kind of like a little gobsmacked and a little like so what was that but I thought it was very very effective didn't have the same emotional thrum that seeing Martin Scorsese you know read or step to the microphone had but I thought it was very effective I just got to say like from a from a structural perspective movie is really really interesting like everything shot in natural light no backlighting nobody's framed like a beautiful actor the persistent dogma of the 21st century lens that's what Glazer kept saying and using all of this tech to show something old and they rebuild the house entirely so everything in it is new because that is what it would have been at that time it would have been a brand new home that was constructed for the man who ran Auschwitz so it's a pretty amazing piece of work I think it'd be pretty weird to watch this movie at home I agree it was it was strange even when I went the second time and understanding the importance of the sound design and as it's starting someone is just like you know rumbling through their packet of the same like junior mens or something and I was like I try not to do that but I was this close to being like you need to stop making noise like this is you'll get it but I saw it on a Sunday night at the same thing I like six guys came in and sat in my row and they were rowdy guys just having the night of the movies and I was like you guys don't know what's coming your way like this is not the movie for this energy I assure you yeah no it's it's just I can't imagine being able to recreate the technical because it is so technically like intentionally proficient I don't know it's it is it's strong stuff how about that I thought Friedel and Sandra Hilarious very good in this film yeah performance is hard performance is to celebrate some people thought Hilar could have been nominated for supporting actress as well she was not I like what Glazer said about how he directed her in this movie because she had a hard time accessing this character for obvious reasons much different than a character in that movie which son also read as kind of a cold character but she put a lot of identification into but he said I remember saying to Sandra never stop moving keep going from one activity to the next so you'll never be tempted to stop and reflect when you see her performance that's what you see and what is remarkable is her commitment to playing this non-thinking non-reflective selfish human being that's very good to reckon very smart pleasure is very very smart I again very weird to be like what do you think of its Oscar chances but it is competing in five categories and five big categories I have I mean it will win international feature it feels like it and I think it should win sound I agree there was a bit of a sigh of relief amongst those who appreciated the film it was not made for sound yeah I think I mean that's so it's a big work to the way that it's made I don't know about the I don't know about adaptive screenplay director or picture it seems like a sort of honor to be nominated type situation I mean it will I am very interested to see how people respond to it as more people see it I really did when I went yesterday after the Oscar nominations it felt like a room full of people who were like well this was nominated for an Oscar so I've got to go you know I've got to go see it and it's like this is not see this good you know what I'm saying yes yeah that's very astute that a lot of people are going to be wrong footed their way into seeing what they think is just a movie about World War II right and this is not that like in some for some people this one will be very boring I think for other people it will be deeply upsetting in a way that they were not they don't want right you know that they don't want to have a night at the movies feel this way and and people also may not may not appreciate the portrayal and the choices and the way that it's you know like it's a hot button movie it is I think also something so hard to parse at times I don't think I fully understood the first time I saw it that what was what Fridale's character had stepped on was a human jawbone when he's in the river in that critical sequence when he rushes home and races to children home they'll wash them so they attempt to wash themselves of the sin of all of this but again seeing it a second time you can really kind of understand every critical choice like that but most people are not going to see a second time most people are not going to like it again it is astonishing to me that this movie is being recognized in this way I'm trying to figure out what this says it feels a little bit like the parasite win inflection point for me about what the academy awards is now and in some ways this is really cool and interesting that a challenging film like this from a filmmaker who hasn't really no legacy with the academy but it is extremely respected definitely like in a world that large so the people who know know it's his strategy throughout this has been interesting he's only done only done a handful of interviews he's done very few interviews by himself but he's done a lot of Q&As so this movie they did a very good job we had all these questions about campaigning in this mailbag and one way to do a campaign is to have this kind of almost um church like approach to a piece of art where it's like this movie has to be seen to be believed and once you've seen it the people who made it will talk to you about what they did this is a strategy this is a very smart strategy that got the movie probably in front of more people than otherwise would come out for it so obviously it worked I hope it makes more movies it's weird to be like what did he say his next movie is going to be about oh I don't know if I saw that uh not feelings but something related to it sentiment something sentiment maybe that's not but it was something like that would be an exciting twist um from director of birth it was something birth is so good it's so so good um it was something where the reaction was oh okay that will be interesting to see from Don Laue's there I look forward to uh whatever he does next he's great um that just does it for us Bob did you like his own of interest you really gonna toss to me at the last minute to be like did you like it that's a tough tough question to answer um I I mean I I generally agree with like your framing of it as a piece of art that is meant to make you think deeper not necessarily a piece of art that like like a lot of movies are a piece of art that has meant to entertain you for two hours and to move your day long like this is very much not that so if you're not the type of person that is like ready for that or not the type of person who even wants that sort of thing in their cinema then this movie is probably not going to be free I had a slightly different read on the flash forward scene it occurs after you know you guys mentioned that he's like walking down the stairwell and he's he's dry heaving and that happens like right after a phone call that he has with his wife this under holder character where he says I couldn't help but think when I was in the full when I was in a room full of people I just thought how would I gas them and I read it as like people in real time even if they don't know it kind of cognitively processing that they are so evil they are going to become part of history 100 years later like that there will be whole museums dedicated to their evil and that the weight of those decisions that they were making almost like breaks the space and time continuum and he has a flash forward and views this himself the character himself sees this happening I I think that's part of the intention but I don't know that it's quite so one-to-one psychologically I thought it was more of like an ethereal like I don't know that his pride of place was about like the where he will live in history more than he is like an efficiency monster but the history will will confirm his evil you know like it's been some time reading about him he completely he fully acknowledged and I guess I don't know if you can apologize for the work that he did at Auschwitz but he before he was killed before he was executed he I turned over his diaries right and he identified that he was one of the architects of all of this pain and everything he did was wrong that this that he thought that this was right and here's why all the ways in which it was wrong he wrote letters to his children explaining about how he hoped they could have better lives that were not clouded by this hate and the way that the world this world was built and you know whether or not that was performative in an effort to engender sympathy is up for debate but I thought it was more of like kind of like metaphysical reckoning of what he had done as opposed to his own identification but you know what I don't know I don't know what attention was I I don't know if I connected them in quite the same way and I will say I started to just throw a little wrench at the end of the conversation you know Bobby I agree with you that the him retching is like some just like subconscious physical you know like the body taking over where the mind won't go in terms recognition of yes his evil evil and his hand is ax and that note in the movie where even he would have some sort of physical recognition you have to end a movie somehow and I do think that we as audience members and like you're you sit through this movie and I don't you like you need something I guess but I was like this to me is a little bit out of step with the portrayal of these people for the rest of the movie and I'm glad we're talking about this is making me I think better understand how I feel about it which is I think that it's purposeful and I think it's notable that he does not vomit that he chokes it back and that whatever could have come out whatever could have been acknowledged as you know some admission of this the awfulness of this thing that he is enacting he's able to move past which is exactly the point of the movie which is about compartmentalizing right the awful things that are happening in the world so that you can get a new car and have a cool house and that he is choking back whatever centilla of humanity he has so that he can go for and get the get the things he wants and I think that's a profound point if it's the point that they're trying to make but because they're still human being he wasn't not a human being he just was a dreadfully historically awful human being destructive human being and right after this moment in history is when he's called back to Auschwitz to execute the most people in the most concentrated amount of time of the entire concentration camp exactly so he it was almost like one last swallowing of any inch of morality before doing that and then and then being killed very what a sun sunray sun beam of a boom yeah boy is this the same podcast that started with me screaming about Hillary Clinton it is that's just a really wild shift I think we should just drop the whole movie thing entirely we should just be a full blown history pod which is just look at the entire arc of human history going forward what do you think let's next week on JMO okay thanks that's at least a thousand part series on JMO the arc of human history series where we're like we're only like a third of the way through that so it would be it would be the evolutionary chart would be but it would start with me I would be the chrome man on man you know and it would be a man and then it would bob and then it'd be cr at the top of the food chain you know he would be the evolved man exactly thanks Bob very working this episode thanks for all those great great questions we really appreciate it we will be back next week with two very special episodes I'm very excited about them but I will say nothing about what they are see them